Field of the Invention
This invention relates to marine facilities, and more particularly to breakwater systems.
Background Art
The cyclic forces and motion of wave activity near shorelines has traditionally created problems such as erosion of shorelines, damage of shore-based equipment, navigation problems for small watercraft near reefs, shorelines, and shore-based equipment, and so forth. Waves have a complex motion that includes both cyclical rising and falling of the water level as well as a to-and-fro or ebb-and-flow (actually flow and ebb, respectively) motion of the water as it flows toward shore and recedes away. Typically, wave attenuation systems, or “breakwaters” as they are typically called, have been devised from several mechanisms.
For example, conventional breakwater systems may include concrete sea walls against which the waves may pound, rock structures, such as rip-rap of rocks, which may or may not be retained within a steel net structure, jetties constructed of large boulders on the order of several feet across each, and some much larger, and so forth. Sometimes, certain floating structures have been used, such as floating logs, rafts, piers, and so forth. Likewise, pilings supporting various structures have also been used as breakwaters.
What is needed is a system that is resistant to the effects of erosion, suitable for redirecting mass, momentum, energy, and power generated by wave action. Such a system should be effective for cutting down wave height and reducing wave momentum and energy over a long (decades) period of time. Concrete eventually breaks up, fixed constructions such as rock piles, jetties, and the like require considerable construction with commensurate disruption of the sea bed and the marine environment, with the associated time, expense, and labor required. Floating systems are largely ineffective.
It would be an advance in the art to provide a simplified system that may be towed into place, anchored unobtrusively to the sea bed, and left to effectively operate for decades without significant maintenance, refurbishment, and the like.
Also, it would be highly desirable to provide a system that is sufficiently robust that it does not even require intense inspections more than every year or every several years during its lifetime.